North Korea Claims Progress on Long-Range Goal With Missile Test

Image

The leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, in an undated photo. Military experts in the region say that the country is still years away from achieving capabilities that it has claimed, like striking the continental United States, as well as its military bases in the Pacific.CreditCreditKorean Central News Agency, via Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea claimed on Monday that it had successfully tested a new type of nuclear-capable missile, one that uses a solid-fuel technology that American experts say will make it easier for the country to hide its arsenal underground and roll its missiles out for quick launch.

The test took place on Sunday (Saturday evening in the United States) and was dramatic enough that aides to President Trump and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan interrupted their dinner at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to bring them early reports of the launch.

Initially there was concern that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, had made good on his threat to test an intercontinental ballistic missile, which one day may be able to reach the United States. Before dinner was over, it was clear that was not the case.

North Korea’s news service, KCNA, announced that the launch involved a new missile, called the Pukguksong-2, which appears to be based on the design of a submarine-launched missile it tested last year.

The Sunday test went only about 310 miles, falling harmlessly into the sea after following a high-arc trajectory that took it briefly into space. That is well short of the estimated real range of the missile, of 700 or 800 miles.

But the importance of the launch was not the missile’s range — though it could reach much of Japan — but in how hard it would be for the United States, Japan or South Korea to have warning of a launch in a real conflict.

The launch of older rockets provides warning time because the loading of liquid fuel takes hours, and can usually be spotted by satellites.

Solid-fuel rockets like the new Pukguksong-2, if the North Korean description is accurate, could provide little advance warning time. They can be stored on mobile launchers, rolled out and prepared for launch in minutes. The North said the test was conducted from a self-propelled mobile launcher.

“All of these factors would make it much harder to find and pre-emptively destroy the Pukguksong-2,” John Schilling, a missile expert, wrote on Monday on 38 North, an online publication that specializes in North Korea.

For Mr. Trump, the new weapon complicates the problem of countering North Korea’s missile and nuclear program. It would be far harder for Mr. Trump to threaten to strike North Korean launch sites if the country’s mountainous terrain is hiding scores of mobile missiles in tunnels.

KCNA said that Mr. Kim inspected the test, which seemed to suggest that he may have been present at the launch site.

“He expressed great satisfaction over the possession of another powerful nuclear attack means, which adds to the tremendous might of the country,” the news agency said, using its typically boastful tone.

After previous tests, officials representing Washington and Beijing agreed to issue statements condemning them. It remains to be seen what posture the Trump administration will take — and how China will react.

On Monday, the United Nations Security Council said it “strongly condemns” the missile test, while the American ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, warned in a statement that the Trump administration would seek to hold Pyongyang accountable “not with our words but with our actions.” She did not elaborate and declined to speak with reporters.

North Korea has had a spotty record in test-launching the model known as Musudan, which had been the North’s only known intermediate-range ballistic missile until the Pukguksong-2 was unveiled on Sunday. Its last Musudan test, in October, ended in failure.

“Now our rocket industry has radically turned into high-thrust solid-fuel-powered engine from liquid-fuel rocket engine and rapidly developed into a development- and creation-oriented industry, not just copying samples,” Mr. Kim was quoted as saying.

North Korea said the new missile was based on the solid-fuel, submarine-launched ballistic missile, or SLBM. After several failed attempts, the North said in August that it had successfully launched the SLBM, claiming that the continental United States, as well as American military bases in the Pacific, were now within the range of its missiles, an assertion that military experts questioned.

Analysts and defense officials in the region said that North Korea was still years away from achieving the ability that Mr. Kim claimed. The country still does not have submarines large and advanced enough to travel long distances to attack distant targets across the Pacific without being detected, they said.

But the North’s tests of SLBMs and the Pukguksong-2 demonstrated the advances the secretive country had made in its efforts to enhance the range and stealth of its missiles, South Korean military officials said. On Monday, North Korea said it launched its Pukguksong-2 at a sharp angle to keep it from landing too close to Japan, indicating that it could have flown further than 310 miles if it had launched it at a normal angle.

Although North Korea has never fired an intercontinental ballistic missile across the Pacific, it has boasted of successfully testing crucial technologies in the past year. In March, it reported the successful ground test of a newly designed solid fuel rocket engine. A month later, it reported a successful ground test of a new intercontinental ballistic missile engine.

Mr. Kim reminded the region of his missile threats during his New Year’s Day speech, in which he claimed that his country was in a “final stage” of preparing to conduct its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile. North Korea later said it could flight-test one “anytime, anywhere.”

Tom Karako, a proliferation expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy institute in Washington, said that President Barack Obama’s strategy of “strategic patience has failed” and that it was time for the new Trump administration to take a different approach.

“This weekend’s launch is part of a larger pattern of aggressive testing that confirms the North’s intent to produce more capable, more lethal and more survivable systems,” he said.

Correction:March 7, 2017

An article and a picture caption on Feb. 14 about North Korea’s claim that it had successfully tested a new type of nuclear-capable missile misstated, in some editions, part of the given name of the North Korean leader. He is Kim Jong-un, not Jung Un.

Choe Sang-Hun reported from Seoul, and David E. Sanger from Palo Alto, Calif. Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from the United Nations.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: As North Korea Tests Missile, Experts See New Dangers in Its Mobility and Stealth. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe